Monday, October 27, 2008

One firm is taking it to heart that you attack you opponent when they are weak. You try to take their talent and/or drive up their costs during an acquisition.

RJ & Makay is recruiting Merrill Lynch employees to defect before the Bank of America take over is completed. They hope to take top talent or drive up the cost for Bank of America to retain these folks.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Costco has even gotten vendors to redesign product packages to fit more items on a pallet, the wooden platforms it uses to ship and display its goods. Putting cashews into square containers instead of round ones will decrease the number of pallets shipped by 24,000 this year, cutting the number of trucks by 600. By reshaping everything from laundry detergent buckets to milk jugs, Costco has needed 200,000 fewer pallets a year overall.

[Ed: Bold added]

Some quick math indicates that is [24000 / 600 =] 40 pallets per truck.How much fuel and a labor cost is saved from not making these 600 truck trips? Just thinking about it, you know the savings are significant. All that from redesigning the package for one item.

BrandWeek has an interesting article about brands that do well during turbulent economic conditions. It is clear that some brands or segments do better. More meals at home means firms that are ingredient or raw material [Home cooking] oriented should see sales growth. Firms in food service will see shrinking margins and declining revenue as the total [food service] pie becomes smaller.

Assumption: Consumers pull back on dining expenses in an uncertain economy

Likewise, Wal-Mart, which seemed to be losing brand power only a year ago, today is poised to reap the rewards of consumers who are looking to save some cash. In September, as same-store sales for Kohl's and Nordstrom fell 5.5% and 9.6%, respectively, Wal-Mart's rose 2.4%. Author and branding expert Rob Frankel thinks the retailer's gains will closely mirror the economy: "Wal-Mart is the brand that reminds people they are poor. Nobody shops at Wal-Mart because they want to; they shop there because they have to. The minute the economy recovers, Wal-Mart's sales will drop like a brick."

The snippet above [Ed. bold added] indicates that the writer believes Walmart is a brand for the poor and that people only shop there because they have to. Thirty years ago Walmart was a relatively small regional retailer. The US economy has grown tremendously in the last 30 years. People have continued to shop there during this time frame. Walmart had yearly revenue of $348 billion in 2007.

As people gain in affluence they increase spending at retailers that make them 'feel' like they are part of another demographic 'the Affluent'. Costco is an example of a firm that has done a tremendous job selling that feeling to Americans [some would suggest Starbucks as another, $4 coffee drinks].

Now that people are shopping Walmart more out of need, they are beginning to see what a tremendous value they present to consumers. Category best sellers at much lower prices than other retailers. When the economy picks up [in the next 12-18 months?] people will be hesitant to go back to their freewheeling spending. Walmart will retain most of these new shoppers. The more a shopper saves by shopping Walmart the more money that is left for other things.

Where these saved dollars may go...

Dining out

Debt reduction

College

Books

Internet

Computers

Travel

Questions:

What percent of new Walmart shoppers will defect when the broad economy recovers?

Are you cutting back on eating out?

Are you preparing more home meals?

How much do you budget, generally, for dining out, now vs. a year ago?

PS: This post was written before reading the comments on the site with the original story. There were ten comments at the time this was posted. Read them, you might find them insightful.

This would allow the large Twitter community to think of IDEAS to increase revenue and profits for Twitter. They would create a business plan [IDEA] for Twitter to execute. Judging would involve a highly distinguished panel of savvy business people [suggested members of the panel include... Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin...]

This plan could have a big pay off if...1. The plan is strategically sound and uncontrollable factors do not adversely affect the results2. The plan is executed with precision3. The plan successfully drives usage of Twitter in a way that increase revenue and profits and does not increase costs materially.

Using a contest like this is outside the box. It will draw diverse teams that will develop unique IDEAS for making Twitter more successful.

Please review this with your brain trust, evaluate the soundness of the IDEA and #MakeItHappen.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Twitter is an online communication service.Twitter is like nothing you have seen before. There are a few things Twitter is like...

Instant Messaging

Email

Blog

...but mashed together with the best aspects of each.

There are some powerful tools to help one harness the immense power and bring it to the individual. [There are more then this. These are the ones that are most ofen used by Admore]

These are best utilized by placing them in the bookmark / Links bar in your browser. In order to save space on the bookmarks bar I use a folder named "Twitter". Most of the secondary tool are kept there.

Tweet Stats Used to see what a user commonly tweets about. You can do this for yourself as well as for others provided that their updates are not "protected" [locked out of the public stream] In the word cloud, you can now click on the term and see all the conversations that are related. There is more interesting data there as well. Check it out for yourself.

Monitter & Tweet Grid These sites can track trends per key words the user chooses. Sports team work well on game day. Might be interesting to check stock ticker symbols as well. Never tried it, just thought of it.

Twitscoop A nice site to see what terms are trending per the number of updates users are posting.

Twitter Local Great way to find users near an area or zip code. Try a zip code and set the radius to 20 miles. Here is the one for my zip code, 48236. You will probably see my tweets in there somewhere. Look for Admore.

Twitterholic - The Top 100 Twitterholics based on Followers. Would suggest adding just a few of these folks to get started. Their updates may overhwhelm your stream if you add to many and they update alot.

There are a few services that shorten links to a size that works well for tweets. Two that are used frequently are TinyURL [25 characters] and Is.Gd [currently shortens to 17 characters]. There are others and you can search them out on Google.

A few people that you may enjoy following. These folks are in a folder called Peeps. This keeps a direct link to their full page handy.

Zappos Tony the CEO of Zappos is very active on Twitter. He has written a guide for new users, "Beginner's Quick Start Guide and Tutorial to Using Twitter". Some of the features are currently disabled in Twitter [EG: Instant Messaging]. A great read for people who are thinking 'what is this Twitter, sounds dumb so far.' Read it at the link above.